Melilla

Without real change in Europe's refugee and migrant strategy, more innocent people will die in the Mediterranean, in Melilla, and on scorpion-infested river islets between Greece and Turkey.

Spain has deployed troops after record numbers of migrants entered its north African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco.

Some 8,000 people have reached Ceuta in two days, Spanish officials say.

They say the migrants - who include about 1,500 minors - either swam around the border fences that jut out into the sea or walked across at low tide.

Spanish border guards have discovered two migrants hidden inside mattresses strapped to the roof of a car at a checkpoint on the frontier with Morocco, video footage shows.

The footage, published on social media by a senator in the Spanish parliament, is reported to have been filmed in Melilla, an enclave of Spain on the north African coast.

MADRID (AP) — Around 800 migrants stormed border fences separating Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco to get into Europe, police said Thursday.

Spain's Civil Guard said 602 migrants made it onto Spanish soil in a massive assault on high, barbed-wire fences shortly after dawn.

The bodies of at least 20 people have been pulled from the sea off the coast of Melilla, a small Spanish territory bordering Morocco, reported BBC. 

Moroccan rescue services recovered the corpses after the crew of a passenger ship spotted them in the water.

The dead are believed to be migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.

Spain's coastguard says it has rescued 600 migrants crossing from Morocco in a 24-hour period amid a spike in the number of migrant arrivals, reported BBC. 

The rescued migrants were in 15 vessels including toy paddleboats and a jet ski and included 35 children and a baby.

A man has crossed the border of the Spanish enclave of Melilla in Morocco and injured a policeman with a knife, shouting "Allah is great," a spokesman for the police said, quoted by France press.

"The police have arrested a man who has attacked a men with a knife at Benny Enzar border crossing," Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Soido said.

A police officer has been knifed in an attack at the Spanish border.
The officer was attacked by a man shouting “Allahu Akbar”, AFP quoted a police source as saying.
The incident occurred at the border between the North African Spanish enclave of Melilla and Morocco.

At least 800 sub-Saharan African migrants tried to cross into Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco on Jan. 1, by storming a border fence, though most were eventually turned back, the Spanish and Moroccan governments said. 

Around 220 African migrants forced their way through a fence between Morocco and the tiny Spanish enclave of Ceuta Oct. 31, clashing with police in an incident that injured 35, officials said.